In the midst of Donald Trump running for President of the United States, the internet has suddenly revived a clip from the children’s show “Sesame Street” that aired back in 2005. Capturing the essence of Donald Trump with remarkable accuracy, “Sesame Street” depicted their parody puppet as a garbage-hoarding grouch named Donald Grump, who shamelessly made fun of poor people.
The episode was a blatant reference to the Donald Trump reality show “The Apprentice,” wherein the businessman would eliminate contestants with the catchphrase “You’re fired.” The Donald Grump character does the same thing, announcing to other puppets “Scram! You’re fired… That means you don’t gets to be my helper!”
The clip from the episode “Grouch Apprentice” was first recovere d by the Daily Beast , noting that “Sesame Street” holds nothing back in their negative portrayal of Donald Trump. His puppet-likeness is rude, loud, arrogant, selfish, and mean–yet “His name is on every piece of trash in town.”
But as the Huffington Post points out , there’s one character on “Sesame Street” who is not sucked in by the temptation of greed offered by the Donald Trump parody puppet; Elmo. The charmingly innocent character is so willing to help people that he accidentally wins the Grouch Apprentice competition, but Grump tries to fire him anyway. When he realizes Elmo doesn’t care about the job or about garbage, Donald Trump–or rather, Grump, is utterly confused.
Soon, all of the other puppets realize they don’t want to work for the garbage hoarder either and inform Donald Grump that he’s the one who’s fired–because “We can get our own trash.”
This 2005 episode wasn’t even the first time “Sesame Street” made fun of Donald Trump. A 1994 episode features Joe Pesci as another Donald Trump parody-character, this time named Ronald Grump. This depiction of the current presidential candidate is even less forgiving, painting the character as a cruel villain who wants to destroy Sesame Street entirely.
Check out the clip below.
While there’s no doubt that “Sesame Street” intended to mock Donald Trump, these episodes came long before the 2016 race–meaning the show had no intention to harm the businessman’s political aspirations. The Daily Beast reached out to the Donald Trump campaign for a response to the resurfacing of “Sesame Street” footage but received no response.
What do you think? Did “Sesame Street” accurately portray Donald Trump? Or was this simply a light-hearted parody of “The Apprentice”?
[Image credit: PBS]
